suffices that they were committed without remorse, without a feeling of wrong-doing. They are not instances of perverted conscience, but of no conscience, and the concurrent testimony of travelers is that the lower races have no moral sense. Mr. Dove says that the Tasmanians "are entirely without moral views" or impressions. Governor Eyre says the Australians have no moral sense of what is just and equitable in the abstract, their only test of propriety being whether they are numerically or physically strong enough to brave the vengeance of those whom they may have provoked or injured. "Conscience," says Burton, "does not exist in eastern Africa, and 'repentance' means regret for missed opportunities of mortal crime." Mr. Campbell observes that the Soors, an aboriginal tribe of India, are without moral sense. Language is a pretty good measure of mental development, yet the dialects of inferior tribes are generally deficient in terms expressive of moral quality. Remorse is absolutely unknown, and Lubbock says the only instance of a man belonging to one of the lower races trying to account for an act is the case of a young Feejeean, who, when asked why he had killed his mother (in law?), answered, "Because it was right."
It is very difficult to get at the original man, for the reason that wherever found he is the heir of all the ages, and the training of circumstance and condition begins away beyond the reach of mind and memory. No man can remember the time when he could not talk or walk. He can not remember when sad experience first taught him that the candle-flame was not just the thing to cut his teeth upon. No more does his memory go back to the time when his first lessons in ethics were enforced by the gentle spat of the mother's hand or the warning "No! no!" of her reproving voice. Humanity forbids repeating the cruel experiment of Psammeticus, who secluded a child from all intercourse with his kind in order to get at the original speech of man. But nature has done what civilization would have no right to do, and offers in the phenomena of deaf-mutism a psychological study of curious interest. Considered from an intellectual and moral standpoint, the deaf-mute is an anachronism—a prehistoric man standing bewildered in the blaze of the nineteenth century. By simple severance of a nerve connection an invisible barrier is thrown around the child, and in this seclusion the mind develops to a certain extent free from the influences of accumulated culture, and is in respect to ethical notions absolutely primitive. The animal instincts are strong, and their gratification sought after the manner of an animal. He appreciates kindness and resents injury. He will steal and hide the thing stolen, but I have seen a dog do the same. He acquires certain ideas concerning the rights of possession, and will commit murder in defense of such right without remorse. In a recorded case near Rodez, France, officers were sent to seize property for debt. They were driving off the peasant's cow, when the farmer's son, an uneducated deaf-mute, seized a club
